Saved!
by ShatteredLyre
Summary: They say hope is a thing with feathers...which comes in the form of two hapless angels stuck in purgatory until they take care of their unfinished business. Too bad Tao Ren doesn't know that he is the "unfinished business" part.


_In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth._

* * *

Jeanne thought that being dead would have been a lot more dramatic. You know, life flashing before your eyes, loved ones and family members desperately shouting and hovering over your hospital bed as the last bits of your life slipped away for good, rain and doom and gloom in abundance at your funeral, light at the end of the tunnel. That sort of deal.

However, when Jeanne died nine years ago, there was no flashing of her life before her eyes as she kicked the bucket (if it actually did, then her life must have either been very boring, very short lived or both). She had actually been by herself in the kitchen, making an omelet while Ren was off in some country in Eastern Europe (or had it been South America? She didn't really know where her husband was. Ever.) and Men was being taken care of by the nanny. The most dramatic part of her death was probably how the amount of noise the pan she had been holding made when it clattered to the floor had far exceeded the unsaid volume limit instated once Ren and Jeanne had married. It was actually quite lovely, warm and sunny just like Jeanne liked it, during her funeral, the flowers all in the bloom, children frolicking in the park across from the cemetery (why there was a frolickable park across from a _cemetery_ was beyond Jeanne, even in the afterlife) and somewhere in the middle of the eulogy, an ice cream truck had started merrily playing as it made its rounds in the area.

Only later, much later, did Jeanne realize how sad it was that she had paid more attention to the ice cream truck than to the priest's eulogy about her short lived yet well lived life.

But most importantly, there was no light at the end of the tunnel. There was only—

"Oi! Move yer butt up already! The line is movin'!"

Jeanne blinked and realized that the interminably, never ending line of people waiting to get into Heaven had indeed moved forward. "Sorry…" she muttered angrily.

Yes. She had been standing in line. For nine years. And in front of—

She narrowed her eyes at the pompously grinning man behind her. Umemiya Ryu grinned back at her, running a hand through his greasy hair.

"Nine years…_nine years_…" she muttered angrily. "And to think that we _still_ haven't reached the gates of Heaven yet." She shuffled up a few steps and shook her head in disgust. "If I have to spend a minute longer around you I think I might just—"

"Kill yourself? Hate to break it to you, but you're already dead," Ryu fired off, stretching lazily. "Jeez, all these World War II and Vietnam war veterans and baby boomers have been clogging up purgatory. I actually think that beheaded soldier a few souls in front of you is from the Civil War."

"Well, you know what—" Jeanne finally opened her eyes (which she had formerly closed in disgust) and her jaw dropped.

"What's the matter? Cat got your—" Ryu immediately shut up.

Jeanne gasped. "We're…we're…"

"Would you kindly move up already to receive your judgment? We're running on a tight schedule here," came an exceedingly bored voice.

Normally, Jeanne would've responded with a quick _Tight schedule? NINE YEARS? Tight schedule?_ but instead, she simply gaped. "We're finally here…"

"The gates of Heaven!" Ryu cried tearfully.

The cat glared down from his writing desk that was almost borderline comically looming over all the souls in line. "Would you please…" He frowned.

Jeanne blinked rapidly and madly shuffled forth, hiking up the skirts of the dress she had died in nearly a decade ago. _I always wished I had passed away in something less…_ She scrunched her nose up in disapproval. _Frilly._

The cat placed a pair of glasses upon his nose. "D'Fer-Tao, Jeanne. Age upon death, nineteen. Spouse and a son. You died from a…heart attack?" He cocked an eyebrow at her and somewhere in the back of Jeanne's mind, a tiny voice was outraged that the cat was judging how she had died. _Ryu's the one who died from mercury poisoning of all things! Darned sushi chef!_ "And…ah, interesting. U.B.?"

She looked at him in confusion. "U…B…?"

He hurriedly scratched away at her entry in his massively thick ledger with his quill, ink and feather flying everywhere before he retrieved a menacing, ominous looking stamp that was coated in red ink. He forcefully slammed the stamp down over her name with all the power of a herd of incensed elephants. "Entry into Heaven: denied."

Jeanne could hear Ryu clucking his tongue in affected sympathy behind her. "Excuse me? Denied! Why? I've been practically a saint!" she exclaimed.

"It's not like I'm sending you to hell. Or even making you stay in purgatory for the rest of eternity," the cat removed his spectacles to examine her closely.

"What is this U.B. you keep blabbering about?" she demanded.

He sighed and folded his hands (paws?) in front of himself. "U.B. Unfinished business," he stated as if it were common knowledge.

"Unfinished business?" she repeated quizzically. "What unfinished business?"

"According to the ledger, you have unfinished business back on Earth and the ledger is never wrong." The cat took out a magnifying glass, presumably to examine some very, _very_ fine print explaining exactly what business Jeanne had left unfinished. "It seems to concern your husband."

"My husband? But…" Jeanne's voice trailed off.

"But…well…I don't really understand what could possibly still be attaching me to Earth concerning him."

"Did you not love your husband, Mrs. Tao?" the cat asked but Jeanne and just about every other soul still waiting in the snaking, immense line knew that the feline could not have cared any less.

"No…I mean, yes…It wasn't that…that I didn't _love him_…per se…just that…well, we were fond of each other…relatively…" Jeanne stumbled along.

"Were you in some sort of arranged marriage?"

Jeanne frowned. "No…It was really just a matter of convenience…" She sighed. "We were acquaintances prior to our engagement and I do believe sometimes that the only reason he proposed was because he had ran out of other things to say one day."

"How sad."

"Not really. It worked for us, didn't it?"

"A little too well, from the looks of it…" the cat said, rereading the fine print.

"What do you—" But the guardian of the heavenly gate Jeanne and billions and trillions of other souls had coveted so long interrupted her, showing no indications of answering her question.

"You."

Ryu looked around as all his fellow line members backed away from him. He pointed to himself. "Er…me?"

"Yes, you. You've done nothing spectacular in your life," the cat remarked while quickly skimming over Ryu's (lack of) accomplishments in the ledger. "Meaning, namely, that you won't be getting into Heaven anytime soon."

It was Jeanne's turn for some sympathetic tongue clucking.

Ryu scowled. "Don't tell me that—"

"Assist Mrs. Tao here and I will assure you entry into Heaven."

Jeanne turned around to face the cat. "Assist me in what?"

"I'm sending you back to Earth to finish your unfinished business. And you will not be allowed into Heaven until it is seen as satisfactorily taken care of."

Before Jeanne or Ryu could protest their rights, the cat had snapped its fingers and the two dissipated from his sights.

"Next!"

* * *

"I'm back."

Jun emerged from the living room, holding her disheveled hair in one hand, her other arm lazily jutting out as it rested on her hip. She rearranged her bun before retrieving the expensive lacquer clip from her mouth, securing her tresses on top of her head in an exceedingly, unnecessarily ornate fashion. "About time." She sighed and placed both hands on her hips.

"And now I'm gone again," Ren replied as he scaled the stairs of his huge household, gritting his teeth as he noticed how hollowly his steps rang throughout the virtually empty mansion.

"What!" his sister exclaimed, following him up the stairs. "But you—"

"Just came back, yes, I know, Jun. We've been over this for nine years." Ren reached his room and promptly shrugged off his jacket to change into a fresher one.

"Yes, ever since Jeanne died you've been like this." She leaned her weight against the door frame which had been imported from Morocco (or had it been Jakarta?) and a genuinely compassionate expression took hold of her countenance. "Ren, I know that the death of a spouse is hard for all family members but it's been nine years…"

Ren paused before firmly knotting a new tie around his neck. "Jun?"

She perked up, encouraged that she was _finally_ getting some sort of reaction out of him. "Yes?"

"Don't you have _actual_ clients to play psychiatrist with?" He frowned and picked up his briefcase that he had carelessly tossed onto his side of the bed. "Dr. Tao?"

"If you just seriously tried grievance therapy, then you might actually—"

He shook his head.

She crossed her arms in front of her. "You are rather selfish, are you aware of that?"

"I'm a _Tao_—"

She propelled her body off of the door frame to follow his descent down the stairs. "Oh, shush. Do you even remember the last time that you talked to your son?"

He stopped momentarily to mull it over. "Yes, it was last Christmas—"

"And now it's June." She swiftly overtook her younger brother, effectively blocking his path. "You're only home fifty three days out of the entire calendar year and all fifty three of those days, you, spend locked up in your office, planning what business trips you'll go on for the rest of the year." She narrowed her eyes. "That's not healthy."

"Yes, I know that Jeanne had been the only constant of my life, my longest acquaintance and thus she had become my anchor and now after she passed away, there is no sort of anchor to keep me grounded and I express this through my constant jet setting around the world and my aversion to return to the one place that reminds me of her. Here." He passed his briefcase from one hand to the other. "Or some sort of shit that my psychiatrist told me."

Jun scowled. "Ren, I _am_ your psychiatrist."

"Exactly. Now if you'll excuse me…" He reached for the door handle but Jun quickly slapped his hand away.

"Men has scared off twenty-seven nannies—"

"Isn't my son a little too old for nannies? What is he now, eight years old?"

"He's _twelve_—Oh, good God." Jun pinched the skin between her eyebrows incredulously. "You are impossible. Fine. Caretakers. And _why_ does my son have a need for caretakers, Jun? Because his father is never home to care for him. I have a full time job. Bason is basically whipped and allows the boy to walk all over him and he probably would leave if he could—"

"But he can't because he's sworn his life to serving our family." Jun shot murderous, metaphorical daggers at him. "What? It's in the contract."

Jun pursed her lips. "How perfectly Faustian…" she commented dryly.

Ren simply shrugged. "Just put up another ad for a caretaker then." And then he exited the house to catch his flight to Chile. Or Poland.

Jun shook her head mournfully and walked away from the door and back into the living room.

Jeanne clutched at her own face, hovering near Jun. "Oh dear."

Ryu's face was as pale as a sheet. "I had no idea it was going to be _this_ bad!" He scratched the back of his head. "How utterly troublesome. This is going to take a miracle to resolve…"

Jeanne sighed. "Good thing we're heaven sent then."

The two souls scurried into the living room to see what Jun was up to.

"Yes, Boris, I don't care what it takes, just find a damn nanny already!" She paced about the room as the two souls trailed behind her. "Yes, I know that the screening process takes weeks but we can only use employees that we are completely certain are adequate and won't murder all of us in our sleep but…" Jun kept rambling on as Jeanne and Ryu turned to each other.

"What are we going to do?" Ryu whined. "We're never going to get into Heaven at this point!"

"Well, we wouldn't have been sent here if we couldn't do anything…" Jeanne stared at the floor sadly. "I wish he would stay home more often…That way, we could keep an eye on him."

Ryu shook his head emphatically. "Psh, the only way that'd happen is if…is if all the flights in all the airports in the city were cancelled indefinitely."

Jeanne pursed her lips. "I suppose but there's no way that would ever—"

Jun nearly slipped as she turned on her heel suddenly. "Ow, stupid caller waiting tone…Yes, I'll come back to you in a second…Dr. Tao on the—R-Ren? Isn't your flight—" Jun blinked blankly. "All the flights in all the airports in the immediate area have been cancelled indefinitely?"

Jeanne stared incredulously at Ryu who grew pale. "What have you done?" the former Tao bride whispered.

"Was that…was that really me? I didn't know that we could have so much power in this world!" Ryu exclaimed, as if trying to shrug off the impending guilt.

"It would've been easier to have…I don't know, made all his business meetings disappear. Now thousands of people can't make their flights!" Jeanne said fretfully.

Jun paused again. "Wait, all the flights are back online? Okay so now…" Her brow furrowed. "What's going on now? Ren…? Ren? Wait, what…what do you mean all of your business meetings have been cancelled?"

Jeanne could just imagine her former husband exhaling irritably and angrily clutching his phone to his ear.

"So you'll just come back then?" Jun could barely conceal the smile on her face. "How perfect. You do know that children are very impressionable during these developmental stages and you can spend the rest of the year with Men!"

"Jeanne!" She quickly turned around. "I just got an idea!"

"What is it?" she asked, bracing herself for some ridiculous comment that Ryu seemed so fond of making.

"I think…to resolve all of your unfinished business here…Ren was saying something about an anchor, right?" Ryu said slowly as Jeanne nodded. "Why don't we just find him a new anchor?"

Jeanne raised her eyebrows in surprise as his suggestion was actually quite credible and insightful. And yet, she shook her head slowly. "Ren's pushed away any friends that he had made after I died."

Ryu tapped his chin thoughtfully. "What about romantically?"

Jeanne drew her eyebrows together. "Were you in this house earlier? Did you not see how dependent—"

"Well, if he has to be constantly exposed to the same person, he's _bound_ to get attached to them. Just someone to fill in the gap that you left."

"Are you saying…"

Ryu nodded emphatically. "I'm saying that we find Mr. Tao a nanny!"

* * *

"There is no way…I'm letting that woman…_anywhere_ near my child!" Jeanne whispered hoarsely, eyes wide as the lady known as Kanna Bismarch tossed yet another cigarette butt on the filthy carpet of her apartment and took out a knife and threw it at a picture of a puppy superimposed on top of a dart board.

"Damn, missed again," the azure haired she-devil drawled as she took another swig from her beer can.

"What kind of women do you know?" Jeanne asked in horror.

"Eh, sorry, she's the last lady I know," Ryu said, shrugging. "She's not _that_ bad once you get to know her."

The phone rang and Kanna picked it up. "What the hell do you want? Make it fast or I'll stab you in the face and eat your first born child." She attempted to drink from her beer can but, upon finding it empty, crushed it under her fist and swatted it off the table.

Jeanne stared at Ryu before shaking her head and floating out of the apartment. "Impossible." They began making their way back to Ren's house.

"Oh come on, there has to be _one_ that you liked!" Ryu exclaimed. "You're so picky."

Jeanne's eye twitched. "Picky? _Picky_?" She crossed her arms in front of her as they floated on by the city. "Let's see. The orange haired girl. Macchi. She has guns littered about her house and I'm pretty sure she's trigger happy. Then the creepy one…Mari? She looks like she's part of a satanic cult. Anna is already busy with her own son and she'd probably put Men into a Nazi concentration camp." She paused. "But maybe that's what he needs."

"What about Tamao?" Ryu asked hopefully.

Jeanne blinked as she tried to remember Tamao. "The pink haired one? She's nice enough…Very good with children." She sighed. "But Men would walk all over her."

"Alright, we can resume our _Supernanny_ search later and take a break," Ryu yawned, stretching out in midair. "I'm tired."

Jeanne looked at him blankly. "Ryu…you're…dead. You can't be tired."

He chose to ignore her and instead brightened up. "Hey!" He pointed to a cluster of small shops they were passing over. He turned to Jeanne and flashed her a thumbs-up sign.

"What?"

He frantically pointed again. "That was my old sushi joint!" He clasped both his hands in front of him. "Please…please…_please_ can we stop by? I just want to see what's happened to it." He fist pumped the air as she nodded her approval. "It's probably teeming with customers and garnered five star reviews by all the top critics in the city." His eyes were shining as Jeanne tried to suppress a giggle.

* * *

"Pirika. _Pirika._ _Pirika!_" Usui Horohoro bellowed into the kitchen as he wiped his hands on a ratty old white shirt before tying an equally ratty old white apron around his waist. "Ah, jeez!" he exclaimed, narrowly jumping out of the way as part of the ceiling caved in. "This place is _such_ a dump!"

"Well, if you actually took care of it for once in your life!" drawled Pirika as she stormed into the kitchen holding a bag of fresh fish from the market in her hand.

"What…" Horohoro blinked dumbly at her. "Are those?"

"Fish!" She thrust the bags of fish in front of his face. "You told me to buy some earlier!"

His jaw dropped as he began panicking, looking around the room desperately. "But…but all the tanks are completely full! Shit, shit, shit—"

Pirika clutched the handle of the plastic bags tightly as she rocked back and forth in her comically large pink snow boots. "What about the ones in the back room?" she asked nervously.

"Half of them broke and the other have some godforsaken kinda toxic chemical in them, remember?" Horohoro pushed his hair back as he continued freaking out.

"I didn't know so—"

"Why would you just go and—"

"It's not my fault I was—"

"Try running an entire sushi place by yourself—"

"I help out too, dumbass, and it's not like there are a lot of customers anyways—"

And then several things happened at the same time. Firstly, Pirika was gesticulating so hard while emphatically arguing with her brother that both plastic bags in her hands broke, letting the fish (fresh halibut, salmon, and tuna) spill out all over the floor. Second, Horohoro, still caught in arguing Usui mode, exclaimed "_Oh shit!_" upon said breaking of the bags. Third, a door slammed open and a pair of furious steps stomped inside the rundown sushi restaurant. And fourth, both Ainu siblings froze in place.

"That…that can't be…"

"It is…" Pirika gasped out, flinging the remains of the plastic bag in the air as she tried to find something to hide behind.

"Horo…Pirika…where…" The furious steps came to a halt. "What…is going on here?" the voice asked incredulously.

"A-A-A-A-Anna!" Horohoro managed to squeak out. "What are you doing here so early?"

Pirika nodded. "We…we weren't expecting you so early this week…" she whimpered, trying to hide behind her brother.

Anna frowned as she surveyed the mess. "Guys, I understand that Ryu dying so suddenly and then your surprise inheritance of the restaurant is really…" She frowned even more and tapped her foot. "Oh, I know!"

Pirika shuffled out from behind her brother and Horohoro stopped wincing so much, encouraged by the softening in Anna's voice.

"You're both fired."

"_What._"

Anna sighed as she picked her way through the assorted fish on the ground. "To be completely honest, it's not because of you two…surprisingly. The restaurant was actually making _everyone_ lose money in the end and if you seriously want to work in a sushi bar, then you two deserve somewhere better than this run down place."

Pirika looked utterly confused. "But…we need jobs."

"I'll pay you to look after Redseb and Seyram since Tamao already is caring for Hana." Anna shrugged.

"But…I feel bad that you and Yoh are paying me for something so unimportant…" Pirika mumbled a little too loudly.

Anna raised a skeptical eyebrow. "Unimportant?"

The blue haired girl reddened, embarrassed that Anna had heard her. "Yeah, I mean…I don't get why you would pay me for something that I barely work for…"

Anna pursed her lips. "Pirika, for the overwhelming majority of the human population on Earth at this moment and for every single person to have existed on this planet since Homo sapiens have been bearing offspring, caring for a child is hard work. We're not as lucky as you. Fortunately, looking after kids comes naturally to you…very naturally."

Pirika drew her eyebrows together. "I…I guess…"

Jeanne turned to face a very horrified, very appalled, very tearful Ryu. "I think we found her."

* * *

**A/N**: I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I graduated and then I magically had a social life and then...yeah. **Please, please, ****_please_ review** (especially those who fave my stories or put them alert), I worked so hard on this (you probably can't tell but this actually took a lot of planning, etc). Happy days! Now I'm off to work on _Testimonies_ and _Europe Roundabout_.

also, anyone have a tumblr? link to mine is on my profile!


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